Founded in 1991, Living Cities harnesses the collective power of the world’s largest foundations and financial institutions to build a new type of urban practice that gets dramatically better results for low-income people, faster.
Living Cities (formerly the National Community Development Initiative) was founded in 1991 with an initial focus of providing capital to and building capacity of local community development corporations (CDCs). This support was intended to expand and accelerate the work of CDCs so that they could genuinely transform the trajectory of declining neighborhoods by expanding and accelerating the production of affordable housing. In 2007, Living Cities made an extraordinary pivot, shifting from a core focus on community development to a multidisciplinary focus on both neighborhood and system transformation. This pivot has begun to prove the full capacity of this remarkable collaborative.
In 1990, Rockefeller Foundation President, President Peter C. Goldmark, reached out to a handful of other foundation CEOs to form what was then an unprecedented funding pool: tens of millions of grant and loan dollars, collected in a single initiative, to support community development across the United States. The result, unveiled in 1991 was a $62.5 million fund created by six foundations and a for-profit insurance company. The group called itself the National Community Development Initiative, or NCDI. The creation of the fund was the first action of the collaborative that would later become Living Cities. The purpose, at the start, was to inject enough capital into the work of community development corporations (CDCs) –both their projects and their core management—that they would be able to expand and accelerate production of affordable housing to a level that could genuinely transform the trajectory of declining neighborhoods.
Mission:
Living Cities harnesses the collective power of philanthropy and financial institutions to improve the lives of low-income people and the cities where they live.
Values:
Living Cities’ core values – those in Living Cities believe are fundamental to the organization’s success in achieving its mission – are collaboration, innovation, leadership, and impact. These organizational values guide our everyday decisions about how, why and what Living Cities does.
Collaboration: As a partnership of foundations and financial institutions, collaboration is core to who Living Cities are. Living Cities believes that respect, diverse perspectives and the open exchange of ideas will lead to the innovative solutions and catalytic change that our country needs.
Innovation: Living Cities takes risks, catalyze fresh thinking, and test new approaches in order to creatively disrupt the status quo, change broken systems and provide opportunities for all.
Leadership: Living Cities continually ask difficult questions, challenge obsolete norms, and support others in their efforts to do the same. Living Cities looks for strategic opportunities to promote our point of view and to move innovation from the periphery to the mainstream.
Impact: Living Cities is committed to making material improvements in the lives of low-income people, cities, and the systems that affect them. Living Cities holds themselves accountable for evaluating our effectiveness and are intentionally self-reflective as Living Cities strives to continuously improve, adapt, and inform future innovation.
